The Election Petitions Tribunal hearing matters arising from
Osun State governorship election of August 9, 2014 is set to
deliver its final judgment on Friday, February 6, 2014.
The Secretary of the Tribunal, Mr. Adamu Aliyu, confirmed the
date on the telephone to our correspondent in Osogbo on
Wednesday.
He said, “The judgement is coming up on Friday, February 6,
2014″
The governorship candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party,
Senator Iyiola Omisore, had dragged Governor Rauf Aregbesola
of the All Progressives Congress to the tribunal.
The Chairman of the panel, Justice Elizabeth Ikpejime, had on
January 23, during the adoption of written addresses by all
parties, adjourned indefinitely for the final judgment.
Omisore, the PDP candidate who came second during the poll
with 292,747 votes against Aregbesola’s 394,684 votes prayed
the tribunal to sack the incumbent governor and declare him
the winner of the election.
Omisore’s counsel, Dr. Alex Izinyon ( SAN), had told the
tribunal during the address stage that Aregbesola admitted
that he scored 234,971 votes and not the the number of votes
credited to him by the INEC in his final address.
Chief Akin Olujinmi ( SAN), who represented the first
respondent explained that Aregbesola did not admit that he
did not score up to the number of votes credited to him.
He stated that what the table meant was that “assuming with
out conceding, the tribunal cancels the result in the disputed
units, the first respondent would still have won with the new
figure.”
He argued that the petitioner failed to prove his petition.
The counsel referred to the objection of the first respondent to
the petition filed at the hearing stage, saying he adopted the
two applications filed to challenge the competence of the
petition.
Based on this, the first respondent urged the panel to strike
out the petition.
The counsel argued that the petitioner dumped the ballot
papers used for the election and other electoral materials on
the tribunal without demonstrating to the panel how they
related to the case.
He further stated that the duplicate copies of form EC8A
tendered by the petitioner were inadmissible, adding that
those who tendered them were not the makers of the
documents.